Chapter Three #2
“No, they don’t.” His voice was low and level, and there was an expression of strange calm across Samuel’s face.
“But they do offer a financial arrangement that includes matrimony to an actress who will play the part well, with the understanding that an annulment would be sought after a year and a day, and there would be…financial recompense provided.”
Rose ceased dabbing her chin and stared at the man.
He could not be serious. He wished to buy a wife? No sane woman would ever…
But then, he did not want a woman who would fall in love with him, did he? She could see that; this Samuel, Samuel whatever his name was, had clearly formed some sort of scheme that would require a wife, but only a momentary one.
To be sure, there were plenty of gentlemen who wished for the same thing. That was why they went to brothels.
But this man… This man wanted something different.
“Ah, you are finished,” said the waiter, appearing out of nowhere. “Excellent.”
He cleared away their first course as Rose stared in mute confusion at the man who was treating her to luncheon.
He did not seem to be a madman. There was no frothing at the mouth, no staring at the ceiling and muttering, “Mad, mad, they called me!” He had not attempted to hurt her, if one discounted the crash in the street, and she supposed that might have been accidental.
Financial recompense provided.
“Tell me why you need a wife,” Rose said slowly, “and why you won’t need one after a year and a day. That’s mightily specific.”
Samuel shrugged. “I technically only need one for a single day, but the ruse will be impractical if it does not continue for longer.”
“And you need a wife for a single day…because?”
His answer, whatever it was about to be, was interrupted by the arrival of their main course. Rose’s mouth watered as she breathed in the beef roasted to perfection, a double portion of roast potatoes, peas, carrots, parsnips—
“And another bottle of red wine, please,” Samuel was saying.
Rose blinked and looked at her wineglass. Goodness. She would have to slow down.
“Look,” said Samuel heavily as he gestured to start eating. “I have come into some money, but it has been left to myself and my wife. Without a wife, I cannot collect it.”
Rose narrowed her eyes and said, “A great deal of money, I suppose?”
At least, that was what she had intended to say. What actually came out, due to the fact that she had stuffed three forkfuls of delicious food into her mouth faster than she could swallow, was, “A gwaff feel of funny, I spopose?”
She swallowed and tried her best to look dignified. “Is it a lot of money?”
Samuel hesitated, and that told her everything she needed to know. “Yes.”
“And so you need a wife to collect the money. And then what, I wait about in a manor house you buy with the proceeds?” Rose asked, testing the waters as she had another sip of wine.
After all, one wished to know how one was to spend a year and a day in the company of this man. And whether they would…surely, they would not—
“A manor I buy with the proceeds? Oh, no, I believe my London townhouse will be sufficient,” said Samuel with a shrug.
“You intend to buy one?”
“I already have one,” said the man blithely, as though everyone did.
Rose tried not to gape, and thanks to over a decade in the theater, she managed it. She doubted someone like Annabelle could have heard such a thing with such sanguinity.
Besides, London… It had been a long time since she’d been there. Her family had rarely—and they wouldn’t go now, would they?
“Oh, I see,” she said, as though she did. “So you need a wife. For a day. You’ll keep her for a year extra and then turn her out?”
It was almost laughable. Did the man truly think he could hire a wife?
“Oh, no, my wife will receive a lump sum and a generous pension,” Samuel said calmly, as though negotiating for a wife were a daily occurrence. Lord knew, maybe it was. “An annulment, naturally, not a divorce. It would be imperative that my wife and I… Well. Not consummate.”
His ears were red and yet he held her attention calmly.
Rose struggled to keep her giggles under control. This was surely a farce! A joke, a jest. Men did not meet women in the street and offer to marry them!
Her need to giggle faded away as she looked into Samuel’s eyes and saw no laughter there.
“You think this a joke?” he asked quietly.
“It isn’t?” asked Rose blandly. “Forgive me, sir, but you must admit this sort of scheme is beyond strange. There cannot be many people who plan a marriage to gain money—”
“In my circles, they do it all the time,” interrupted Samuel with a droll smile. “They call it naught but custom. That is what they consider marriage is for.”
Her eyes widened. All the time?
“My point is—your circles?”
The slight shifting in his chair, the way his eyes moved from her to his wineglass. “Yes.”
Rose frowned. There was something more going on here, something more that she did not know—and that was something she did not like. “Precisely what sort of circle is that?”
Samuel looked at her again, and his gaze was not so much penetrating as examining. As though he could trust her, perhaps? He knew nothing of her, after all.
“Do you have any family, Miss Morgan?”
Rose bristled. “I asked—”
“I think you will find that I have already asked you that very question, before we even ordered our food, Miss Morgan,” said Samuel politely—or as politely as one can when one is interrupting another, Rose could not help but think.
It helped that he was so handsome. Handsome people always got away with things.
She should know. She was one of them.
“I have no family,” she said curtly. Well, there was no harm in telling him that. “None who still live who will own me. I have not seen them for a very long time. I dare say they have all died now.”
Samuel inclined his head. “I am sorry for your losses.”
“Don’t be. They were lost to me a long time ago,” said Rose, ignoring the twitch in her stomach.
She was not going to think about them. She was not.
“So there is no one to defend your honor, should I seek an annulment,” he continued, making clear precisely why he wished to know.
Rose stiffened. “Should I require someone to defend my honor?”
“Are you accepting my proposal?” Samuel returned without missing a beat.
Opening her mouth to retort that of course she was not, it was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard, Rose found that she instead filled that open mouth with a bite of delicious and succulent roast beef.
This made it difficult to answer for two reasons. Firstly, because she had her mouth full. She was not so unladylike as to speak with her mouth full, even if the man was propositioning her.
Secondly, because it reminded her just how good food tasted. One did not appreciate the variety of good food, any food, until it had been absent. And it had been absent.
Rose inhaled deeply. “What is your name, Samuel? All of it, I mean.”
The hesitation should have told her everything. “It is not important for you to know.”
“Oh, I think it is. If you are proposing matrimony to me, which I think you are, even if it is by arrangement and by mutual agreement to cease in just over a year…” said Rose carefully.
A little Rosalind, a little Lady Capulet…
“I think I deserve to know what name I shall be known by for that year.”
Samuel swallowed. She attempted not to notice the bob of his throat, or the edge of his jawline, or how his shirt was so tight. All of which she failed at.
“My name,” he said quietly, “is Samuel Chance.”
Chance. Chance—did she not know that name?
“Chance,” she repeated quietly. “That is a name of some repute, is it not?”
The fact that he laughed did not answer her question, and when the man saw her expression, he added, “Yes. Yes, it is. In fact it will be shortly announced that I am the new Marquess of Aylesbury.”
Marquess of—
“Your father died and left you a title and money, but only if you are married?” Rose asked in horror.
Truly, nothing had changed in the nobility and aristocracy…
“Not exactly,” said Lord Samuel Chance, newly titled Marquess of Aylesbury, man of mystery.
“But when I find a wife—and I will find a wife, Rose—she and I will inherit my Great-Aunt Tessie’s fortune.
That wife will live in luxury, in warm and luscious homes, wearing fine silks and eating delicious food eight times a day if she wishes. ”
Rose leaned closer, despite herself. There was something truly seductive about the man’s voice—and the man’s words.
“She will take tea with my family, and smile, and act the perfect marchioness because that is what she will have to be,” Samuel continued, his dark eyes raking hers.
“And when she and I reach our first wedding anniversary—though if anyone asks, we must pretend we married weeks ago, for reasons I will explain in time—we will go to a solicitors and sign a few pieces of paper, and my wife will have never been my wife. She will, however, be in possession of ten thousand pounds and a pension of a thousand pounds a year. She can go off and live her life any way she chooses.”
Rose swallowed.
Ten thousand pounds—and a yearly income of a thousand pounds, all gained if she sat around in fancy townhouses and played at marchioness?
Why, it was a role of a lifetime.
And then she asked the question which she was almost certain would lose her any hope of gaining access to such a role. “Why me?”
Samuel blinked. “Why not you?”
“I am a nobody. I am an actress without work, without support, without…” Rose’s voice trailed away. “I will be in your debt.”
“You will be unlikely to disagree with me, yes,” said Samuel quietly. “I am willing to take a chance on you, Miss Morgan. I need a wife, soon, and an actress who can play the part well enough to fool my mother—at least for a time—is what I need. The question is, will you take a chance on me?”
Rose swallowed. Her mouth, so recently filled with enchanting and resplendent food, was somehow dry.
The temptation to take another sip of the rich, berry-red wine was strong, but as she looked at her glass, she rather wondered whether this newly titled marquess had been topping it up without her noticing.
“I am willing to take a chance on you, Miss Morgan.”
It was a chance, a ridiculous one that no actress had surely ever received before.
The role of a marchioness—even better, with all the trimmings.
Why, Rose thought rapidly, she could order gowns and buy jewels and all sorts of things that surely this man would not want to keep.
She could gain far more than a mere ten thousand pounds.
And all it would take was…marrying him.
“You wish to decline.”
The man’s disappointment was strange to hear. Rose looked up to see Samuel slumped back in his seat. So, he had no other options but herself. That meant she could negotiate—and the first rule of negotiation, as any actress worth her salt knew, was timing.
“I need time to think,” she said quietly.
A flash of hope in Samuel’s eyes told her that she had him.
Or perhaps not quite. “I don’t have much time,” he reminded her. “I need a wife by the end of the week.”
“So a day will not matter,” said Rose brusquely. “You start work on that special marriage license and I… I will think.”
Just as soon as I work out precisely what to think, she could not help but wonder in the privacy of her own mind.
“And are there ices as part of this dinner?” she added, her stomach rumbling despite the great amount of food she had shoveled into it. “I adore ices. Are there ices?”
“There can be ices. Well, your suggestion is fair. Until tomorrow, then,” said Samuel with a laugh. “Now, would you like to see the dessert menu? Or shall I just order one of everything, doubling the ices?”
Rose grinned. “How well you know me already.”